Efforts to Introduce an Indigenous Identifier in a Canadian Provincial Health Authority

Across Canada, Indigenous identity data is not routinely collected in healthcare settings. This paper focuses on [province] and whether the largest and only province-wide healthcare services organization in Canada, [healthcare organization name] should implement an Indigenous identifier in their new electronic medical record system. Due to the current absence of an Indigenous identifier, it is difficult to identify Indigenous peoples in administrative healthcare data to guide healthcare decision-making specifically for Indigenous peoples and to assist with population-specific disease surveillance and prevention programs. Moreover, it is often challenging for Indigenous nations, communities, and organizations to access this data. The data that does exist in [province] frequently excludes large segments of the Indigenous population. Indigenous researchers globally have called for improved health data in alignment with Indigenous research principles, data governance and sovereignty. This paper reports on an exploratory study of potential avenues to enhance availability of Indigenous specific health data in [province]. Of interest are possible supports, concerns, and potential barriers for the introduction of a policy to collect self-disclosed Indigenous identity data in the [org] new electronic medical record system. This research included interviews and focus group sessions with diverse subject matter experts including academics, Indigenous health practitioners and healthcare administrators. The project was embedded in the [removed] which is an [province] based research network for improving primary health with and for Indigenous peoples